Issue 8

Elements The Scientific Magazine of the University of Puget Sound

Bees: What’s all the buzz about?

Slimy Secrets of Slug Sex

Aliens!

Not as foreign as you think

I Spy

Science Edition ...Genetics, Armadillos, and Leprosy

Issue 8, Fall 2010

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Credits

Editors-in-Chief: Chelsea Corser-Jensen, Robert Niese Layout Editor: Chelsea Corser-Jensen Publication Manager: Dana Maijala Publicity Manager: Robert Niese Copy Editors: Maggie Shanahan, Kallie Huss Treasurer: Mary Krauszer Faculty Advisor: Kena Fox-Dobbs Front Cover Photo: Kallie Huss Back Cover Photo: Krystle Pagarigan Table of Contents Photo: Robert Niese CosmoNerd: Cony Craighead CosmoNerd Photo: Kevin Curlett, Jane Cornell

Acknowledgments Elements would like to thank ASUPS and the Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Math/CS, Geology, and STS Departments for their continued support.

We would also like to thank the following organizations and individuals: Office of the Admissions for purchasing our magazine; the ASUPS Media Board and Tamanawas for loaning us the computers and software we need; UPS Photo Services for curbing our Wikimedia usage; And lastly, thank you, Carol Curtin, for all your help!

Contact & Publishing e-mail: elements@pugetsound.edu

web: http://clubs.ups.edu/clubs/elements mail: ASUPS - Elements, University of Puget Sound, 1500 N Warner St. #1017, Tacoma, WA 98416 Published by Consolidated Press 600 S. Spokane Street, Seattle, WA 98134

This issue was published on paper from well-managed forests, controlled sources and recycled wood or fiber.

Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Letter From The Editors

I

t has been four years since the collaborative minds of Marissa Jones and the noble staff of Issue 1 brought Elements into existence. After a few bumps and brief remission, Elements is officially and successfully under the command of its second generation staff team.

To ensure the survival of the magazine, we have worked hard to establish a more prominent role as an on-campus media and are only steps away from becoming an ASUPS-sponsored publication. As always, we have for you a conglomeration of topics, ranging from the ooey gooey details of slug sex to the science behind many of the fictional creatures you’ve seen in movies like Avatar and Alien. In the feature article this Fall, Maggie Shanahan outlines the role of bees in warfare, medicine, and agriculture - a sweet combination, if you ask us. You are sure to find an article in the mix that interests you, and keep an eye out for photographs that were taken by our very own ASUPS Photo Services.

In the interest of incorporating the work of more students across campus, we organized the “First Annual Elements Magazine Summer Research Photo Contest,” offering the highly-coveted back cover photo position as a reward. After much deliberation, we decided on Krystle Pagarigan’s image of a fruit fly intestine that she took using the newly acquired confocal microscope. We decided, however, to include all of the submissions we received in a full page spread in the middle of the magazine as a way of displaying the accomplishments of many of the UPS science students.

Lastly, we were very fortunate this semester to have the opportunity to chat over lunch with Carol Kaesuk Yoon, a science writer for the New York Times and the author of Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science. We discussed a variety of topics including the current role of science journalism as a printed media, the evolution of the science blog, and, of course, the late nights and long hours that come with the job. Carol is a true inspiration to us, demonstrating that, despite struggles along the way, nothing is more gratifying than being able to share our passion for science with a diverse audience. We hope you enjoy Elements as much as we do!

Sincerely, Chelsea Corser-Jensen and Robert Niese Editors-in-Chief, 2010-2011

of the University of Puget Sound

Table of Contents The Science of Science Fiction

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Applications of Biomimicry

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Robert Niese & Mary Krauszer

Rachael Siegel & Robert Niese

The Bees Knees

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Are You Colorblind?

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Summer Science Research

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Elements Book Review

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Sob Story: What’chu cryin’ ‘bout?

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Really Slimy Sex

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The Best Science Videos of YouTube

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Dichotomous Key: Northwest Seasonal Ales

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I Spy: Elements Edition

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Genetics, Armadillos, and Leprosy

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Taxidermy Nerd

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Maggie Shanahan Noah Jacoby

compiled by Chelsea Corser-Jensen Lisa Kant

Chelsea Corser-Jensen Mary Krauszer KK Parker

Tamara Logsdon Robert Niese

James Gaines

Are you fur real???

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Science in Contex t

Aliens are Real!

The Science of Science Fiction M ary K rauszer

and

R obert N iese

O

rbiting the fictional extrasolar planet Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri A solar system, there is a moon known as Pandora. This planet, the setting for James Cameron’s epic, Avatar, is teeming with life of all shapes and sizes.

Some seem familiar, while others are like nothing humans have ever seen before.

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Or are they?

Glaucus atlanticus is not an alien, but a nudibranch.

makers, and imaginative youngsters was inspired, in part, by life on Earth? That’s right. Everything from Avatar to Alien – they all had inspiration from life here on Earth.

Not-so-Alien Aliens Alien Perhaps the most recognizable and iconic monster of all time is Ridley Scott’s creature from Alien. The Alien from Alien, known to exobiologists as Internecivus raptus (Latin for “murderous” and “to snatch”) or more colloquially as a xenomorph (Greek for “alien form”), was originally designed by the Swiss surrealist artist H.R. Giger. In Giger’s original paintings, the creature is distinctly humanoid - it is bipedal with two arms, two legs, a humanoid torso and musculature - it even has five fingers! Clearly, these forms are recognizable and rather unoriginal, but the creature also has a terrifying head with an even more terrifying mouth. Surely, there is no creature on earth that has a cranium even remotely similar to the Alien’s.

Wrong again! A large portion of the head and body structure of the xenomorph was based on a deep-sea, pelagic crustacean called Phronima. This little arthropod looks astoundingly similar to the Queen Alien, which first appeared in the cross-over film Alien vs. Predator. Not even the fright-

So how many of the exotic creatures on Pandora are actually just creative representations of Earthly species?

All of them. Yes, it’s pretty safe to say that every living thing in Avatar was inspired by organisms found on Earth.

Would you believe me if I told you that every fictional being ever conceived in the minds of creature creators, monster

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Nope. This is Glaucus atlanticus, a pelagic sea slug, or nudibranch, found off the shores of South Eastern Australia, South Eastern Africa, in the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean. It crawls upside down on the surface tension of the ocean in search of its prey, the Portuguese Man-of-War. That interesting metallic color allows G. atlanticus to appear like just another shimmering patch of ocean to any airborne predators. And the tentacles? They’re actually called cerata, and they’re packed full of the poisonous, stinging cells it steals from the Portuguese Man-of-War.

IMR/Kjartan Maestad

How about this guy? Surely that metallic iridescence and those strange, tentacle-like limbs were conceived by a member of Cameron’s creative team. And of course, it’s floating in mid-air. Earthly animals don’t cheat gravity like this.

Clearly, this creature is fictitious.

Phronima + Moray Eel pharyngeal jaws = ALIEN

ening “jaws-within-jaws” of the Aliens are original inventions.

Moray eels have a nearly identical set of pharyngeal jaws which serve to facilitate prey capture just like in the xenomorphs.

Dreamcatcher Stephen King is notorious for writing edge-of-your seat thriller novels and creative stories of science fiction. His book Dreamcatcher, later made into a movie, is a perfect example

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of the University of Puget Sound

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of his creative prowess in creature design. However, like all other modern monster makers, even the King’s creations are unoriginal. Perhaps you thought that the worm-like, parasitic byrus (commonly known as shit weasels) from Dreamcatcher were genuine inventions? Nope. Aside from the obvious - the whole worm-like aspect - shit weasels are, in fact, nearly identical to an equally voracious parasite found here on Earth - the lamprey. Lampreys are jawless, marine “fish” that feed on the blood and body fluids of their hosts. These leech-like vertebrates latch onto their hosts with a mouth very similar to those of the shit weasels, however, unlike shit weasels, lampreys will spend the majority of their adult lives clinging to the skin of a host, drinking its blood. Also unlike shit weasels, lampreys are incapable of telepathy and do not have super-human strength. Thank goodness.

As I have already mentioned every one of the creatures from James Cameron’s Avatar were inspired by earthly forms. Most have relatively obvious origins - the Prolemur inspired by the lemur (of course), the Dire Horse based on a horse (of course), the Viper Wolf (ok, you get the idea) our favorite, however, is the fearsome winged Toruk or Great Leonopteryx. At first glance, this giant creature resembles nothing that lives on Earth, but Avatar’s creature creators were not inspired by a living being. The Great Leonopteryx was actually based on an extinct genus of Pterosaur known as Tapejara, an indigenous word for “the old one.” These ancient creatures were mostly piscivorous and had 16-foot wingspans and crests between four and six feet long! Unfortunately these flying lizards were probably not large enough to support the weight of an eight-foot tall blue alien.

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Avatar

Alien shit weasels or jawless lampreys?

It’s pretty easy to determine the Earthly equivalents of these Pandoran animals, but what about something a little less recognizable? What about the Helicoradians - those spiral-y, plant-like things? Believe it or not, they’re identical to marine polychaete Christmas Tree worms. How about the seeds from the Tree of Souls? Medusoid scyphozoans, or jellies. The bioluminescent plants? Zoanthid cnidarians and various fungi. Every single thing that was thought into existence on Pandora was inspired by terrestrial plants, animals and fungi.

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Felixattchar

Pandorapedia

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Is it even possible?

Can you guess which ones are aliens from Avatar?

Is there any way to really know what life on another planet would look like? If our imaginations are indeed limited by the creatures and images that surround us on this planet, can we ever truly hypothesize what foreign life would look like? Carl Sagan, Earth’s premier astrobiologist, commented on our inability to create original life forms in his 1995 book Cosmos; Some people - science fiction writers and artists, for instance - have speculated on what other beings might be like. I am skeptical about most of those extraterrestrial visions. They seem to me to rely too much on forms of life we already know. [...] I do not think life anywhere else would look very much like a reptile, or an insect or a human - even with such minor cosmetic adjustments as [blue] skin, pointy ears and antennae [or pony tails].

But how can we really know that extra-terrestrial life won’t be like Earth life? What makes us so sure that foreign lifeforms won’t be bipedal, two-eyed, and humanoid?

To answer questions like these, we look in the most surprising place – Earth itself. If we wish to think about how life

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine it are not essentially necessary to terrestrial biology and would not arise again given the chance for a “do-over.”

In his book, Wonderful Life, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould takes a step back in time to the Cambrian explosion where Earth experienced a greater diversity of life than ever before. Every living thing on Earth today, is descended from a few of these seemingly alien forms. This period gave rise to creatures so strange, paleontologists have given them names like Hallucigenea, the hallucinated being, and Anomalocaris, the anomaly shrimp - creatures that continue to defy standard methods of classification. Gould interprets the existence of so many “weird wonders” as evidence of the highly experimental nature of this period of animal evolution.

So, would we see these major evolutionary events leading to familiar Earthly adaptations on another planet? Would extraterrestrial life again require large heads, complex feeding structures, jointed limbs, wings, and respiration? The extreme improbability of this convergence indicates that there is a similar strong selective force present in Earth evolution and in the aliens we imagine. We could blame similar environmental conditions, quintessential predator-prey interactions, and energetic congruences, but these selection pressures would not necessarily produce the bipedal, two-eyed humanoid as the dominant character. So, what does?

All these critters once roamed the Earth! Say What?!

In the midst of these strange creatures Gould poses a thought experiment: if we could rewind and replay the tape of life from this crucial point, would life turn out the same?

Tetrapodism, or the condition of having four limbs, arose from lobe-finned fishes in the later stages of the Paleozoic period which the Cambrian began. But trolibite limbs, jointed six times each and bursting from the organisms sides in sets of twenty plus, could have better fit the new requirements of life’s land invasion and your dog would look more like a centipede battle cruiser. Characteristics, such as limb number, which are so familiar to us that we would never consider any alternative, were selected upon by the demands and niches available during these formative moments in evolutionary history. Locomotive efficiency, physiological practicality, and genetic randomness would not mind giving Sparky 38 legs if it meant that he could escape predators, disperse widely, locate food sources, and find a mate with whom to propagate his novel adaptation.

Gould’s point, then, is that the random events which lead to the success of a species or adaptation, which is largely dependent on the success of individuals, would not end the same way if played out again. That would be like fifteen hundred people each with a colored square of paper, acting independently, trying create an unplanned picture for the second time (that actually makes very little sense). In other words, those characteristics which define life as we know

You! The audience’s reaction and relation to movie and its creatures acts as the ultimate selective pressure in science fiction and the evolution of extraterrestrial worlds. Dr. Peter Wimberger, evolutionary biologist and Avatar aficionado, observes, “We see the market-driven evolution of characters in the predominant depiction of intelligent extraterrestrials as anthropoid forms and in the evolution of Mickey Mouse from a stick figure to a cuter, more cuddly baby-looking mouse.” This market-driven evolution gave the Na’vi four limbs instead of six, transformed the Alien from monster to humanoid, and granted shit weasels telepathy.

Despite the depressing fact that we can never predict exactly how extraterrestrial life will appear, exobiologists, LARPing Na’vi weirdos, and Battlestar Galactica fans will continue to dream about alien beings. Though slightly unoriginal, these fictional biotic blendings have given rise to such beloved characters as Jabba the Hut and his mounds of worm flesh, insectiod pirates with nasty tempers, and pompom Tribbles that keep us excited about life and its possibilities, Earthly and otherwise. With recent astronomical discoveries such as Gliese 581 C, the most Earth-like planet found outside our solar system, we have to wonder whether the time to test our ability to predict these things is nearer than we think.

If we do ever happen to bump into those glowing balls of pure consciousness, void of all recognizable morphology, at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe only to find that we got it all wrong, I will be glad to meet them.

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may have evolved on other planets, we first must understand how life evolved on our planet.

Gliese 581 C, the boring, non-fiction version of Pandora?

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of the University of Puget Sound Science in Contex t

Imitating the Environment: Applications of Biomimicry

R acha el S iegel

and

R obert N iese

T

hey say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, and Mother Nature has earned her share of compliments. When it comes to biomimicry – a new science that seeks solutions by emulating the natural world – Mother Nature is the genius who has all of the answers. From the smallest microbe to the largest animal, applications of biomimicry are all over our artificial, modernized existence.

Velcro

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Photo Services/Kevin Curlett

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Remember in elementary school when those awesome lightup Velcro® sneakers were the shoes to be wearing? It took five seconds to stick those two pieces of fabric together, and then you would smile down at your classmates struggling to tie their shoes with their uncoordinated, pudgy, little fingers. Who invented those stylish kicks? Plants! Okay, not entirely. It was an agitating, burr-producing plant (Banksia spp.) fatefully placed in the path of George de Mestral and his dog. When they emerged from their walk with those annoying little seedpods all over their clothes and fur, de Mestral decided to inspect the burrs under a microscope.

He found that the plant had tiny hooks all over it, which is what allowed it to attach to his clothes so insistently.

This ensured the spread of the seed for successful planting.

After some trial and error, de Mestral invented two pieces of fabric that could easily stick together; one side with tiny hooks like the burr, the other side with tiny hoops.

And so, Velcro® was invented allowing small children (and lazy adults?) to enter the playground two minutes before the fools with the laces.

Photo Services/Kevin Curlett

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1. Modern application of velcro; 2. Banksia burr; 3. velcro

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Photo Services/Kevin Curlett

Sharkskin Swimsuits

Can you see the resemblance?

I’ll be the first to admit that sharks are scary. I know that shark attacks don’t actually occur that often, and yet I still can’t get myself to go more than waist-deep into the ocean. The Pacific Ocean’s freezing temperatures may play some factor in my reluctance to submerge, but sharks are definitely the other reason. If they don’t freak you out already, get this: Sharks have more than just the teeth in their mouth. That’s right, their skin is actually made up of overlapping scales called dermal denticles (little teeth). The fact that their teeth (okay, they aren’t technically teeth) are all over the shark’s body is not what is worrisome. The denticles prevent the formation of eddies, which reduces drag and enables the shark to swim faster. You can’t outswim a shark, which was the basis behind the sharkskin swimsuit. Speedo recreated the function of denticles, making a swimsuit with a V-shaped ridge and a denticle surface print. This allows water to be pulled closer to the swimmer’s body and passes over the swimmer more fluidly. The design also compresses the body to stop skin vibration and muscle fatigue which saves energy and reduces drag by up to four percent.

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

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Way back in 1998, a great movie called Antz was released.

I don’t know about you, but I was determined after watching that movie to move into an anthill. Obviously, as a sevenyear-old, I wasn’t too concerned about the size restrictions of such living conditions. While biomimicry hasn’t emulated anthills, it has come close. Take, for example, the building in Zimbabwe that was inspired by termite mounds. This building emulates the means by which the mounds are able to maintain a stable internal temperature throughout the day. It utilizes a ventilation system inspired by the termites.

Large chimneys naturally draw in cool air at night to lower the temperature of specially designed floor slabs. During the day, the slabs retain the coolness, keeping a constant temperature. The building uses 90% less energy for ventilation compared to conventional buildings of the same size and has already saved the building owners over $3.5 million dollars in air-conditioning costs since it opened in 1996.

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Termite Buildings

Eastgate Centre, Harare, Zimbabwe was inspired by selfcooling African termite mounds.

“Learning about the natural world is one thing, learning from the natural world - that’s the switch - it’s the conscious emulation of life’s genius. 3.8 billion years of field testing. 10-30 million welladapted solutions. The answers to our questions are everywhere!

We just need to change the lenses with which we see the world” J anine B enyus , 2005

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Japanese Bullet Trains with Beaks

Japanese bullet trains inspired by kingfisher bills

You were planning on going to bed early to catch up on sleep last night, but a game (and then a few rematches) of Super Smash Bros. kept you up until the wee hours of the morning. At 8:00 a.m. you realize your fatal mistake as the hammering and sawing sounds drift through your window from the construction of the new building on campus.

Fortunately for you, this interruption will only last until the building is finished. Way back in 1964, Japan invented bullet trains that traveled so rapidly that they created sonic booms every time they entered and exited a tunnel. These booms could be heard as far as a quarter mile away. Unfortunately for the disgruntled neighbors, this didn’t just occur in the morning, but at all hours of the day every day of the week. It was not until the late 1990’s that Eiji Nakatsu, train engineer and avid birdwatcher, solved this ridiculously loud problem. He noticed that a local species of kingfisher created a surprisingly small splash each time it dove into the water. With this avian inspiration, Nakatsu then redesigned the bullet train, modeling the front after the beak of the Kingfisher. The resulting train is not only quieter, but it also uses 15% less electricity and travels 10% faster!

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of the University of Puget Sound 2 Wikimedia Commons

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1. Febreeze technology 2. The lotus effect wicks off water and debris 3. Water droplet on a lotus leaf

Lotus Leaf Detergent While Febreze may get rid of nasty scents, it also gets rid of what the smell is trying to tell you: “Do your laundry!”

But have you ever wondered how Febreze manages these odor-free miracles? I bet you didn’t know that the technology is based on the leaves of the lotus, Nelumbo. When viewed under a microscope, the lotus leaf has millions of ridges and bumps that trap air turn any water on the leaf into droplets that appear to float on its surface. When the wind moves the leaf, the droplets roll right off, collecting any dirt in its path. This microscopically rough surface is now being used in paints, glass, and fabric finishes, reducing the need for excessive cleaning. One fabric, called the GreenShield, mimics the lotus effect and benefits the environment at the same time. This fabric has the same water and stain repellency as conventional fabric finishes, but uses eight times less harmful fluorinated chemicals.

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Humpback whales are surprisingly agile for creatures of such mammoth proportions. A research team at Harvard University believes that this impressive agility is due to the ridges and bumps along the leading edge of the Humpback whale’s flippers 8 . These bumps, known as tubercles, are believed to increase the flipper’s maximum angle of attack, which increases hydrodynamic control. However, if the angle of attack increases too much, the flipper may “stall” and temporarily lose its lift capabilities. The Harvard researchers believe that the tubercles on a Humpback whale fin provide the flipper with varied angles of attack and prevent the entire fin from ever completely stalling, while increasing the overall angle of attack for the limb and thus increasing hydrodynamic control. Similar bumps and ridges on windturbines, airplanes, and submarines could greatly increase (up to 40%) efficiency, control, stability and agility.

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Humpback Whale Wings

Designers have decided that the shape of a whale’s flipper is waaay cooler than these standard turbine fins.

There are many other examples of biomimicry currently being used around the globe – box-like cars inspired by box fish, super-strong fibers inspired by golden orb weaver spiders, condensation-based water collection inspired by the Stenocara desert beetle, solar cells inspired by leaves, and more! Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature and founder of The Biomimicry Institute, believes that the study and imitation of nature will be the key to sustainable invention in our future. In a 2005 TED Talks lecture, she says, “There are organisms out there that have already solved the problems we had spent our entire careers to solve.” If we ever hope to solve the world’s most devastating problems energy crisis, famine, deadly pollution, global climate change - we must find solutions that were created in-context. “And that context, is Earth,” says Benyus, “and these organisms have figured out a solution while taking care of the place that’s going to take care of their offspring.” That is the biggest design challenge that engineers are faced with. Luckily, our planet is home to millions of species ready to gift us with the secrets of their Earth-friendly solutions. “The answers to our questions are everywhere! We just need to change the lenses with which we see the world.”

1 Lemelson MIT Program. “Velcro®.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology. http:// web.mit.edu/invent/iow/demestral.html 2 The Biomimicry Institute. “.” The Biomimicry Institute. http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/home-page-content/home-page-content/biomimicking-sharks.html 3 Science in the News. “Swim like a Shark!” Science in the News. http://www.scienceinthenews.org.uk/contents/?article=8 4 The Biomimicry Institute. “Learning from Termites How to Create Sustainable Buildings.” http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/case-studies/case-studies/architecture. html 5 The Biomimicry Institute. “Learning Efficiency from Kingfishers.” http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/case-studies/case-studies/transportation.html

6 Jane Benyus. “Looking at Nature as Model, Measure, and Mentor,” Ask Nature: A Project of the Biomimicry Institute. http://asknature.org/article/view/what_is_biomimicry 7 The Biomimicry Institute. “Learning from Lotus Plants How to Clean without Cleaners.” The Biomimicry Institute. http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/case-studies/ case-studies/toxics.html 8 Tyler Hamilton. “Whale-Inspired Wind Turbines,” MIT Technology Review. http://www. technologyreview.com/energy/20379/ For further information, check out a hands-on website called Asknature.org, which encourages the community to submit their ideas on how nature could be used to solve science questions.

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Science in Context

The Bees and Me The Past, Present and Future of Our Sweet Symbiosis M aggie S hanahan

For thirteen years, we were content to ignore each other.

Then in 2009 I saw inside my first hive. One Saturday last spring when I happened upon the Hiveminders, Puget Sound’s own beekeeping club, giving a tour of the hives then located in the campus garden. They pried off the wooden lid and smoked the bees down. I put on a net helmet and peered into the hive. It was like seeing thoughts walking around a brain. There were heaps of bees, hundreds. They poured from every crevice, piled on top of each other, burrowed into seemingly solid planks of wood.

The whole world was happening inside that small box.

Hive Structure A typical manmade beehive consists of a stack of rectangular wood boxes called supers. Inside the boxes, movable frames hang like folders in a filing cabinet. Bees build a network of wax cells on the frames in which they store honey, pollen, and brood. The frames can be lifted from the supers for harvest and replaced without disturbing the hive structure. The whole operation is roughly the size of a mini fridge, yet a strong hive holds anywhere from 40,000 to 70,000 bees.

Bees are social animals. The success of the hive depends on extreme teamwork. On a hot summer’s day, for example, worker bees might be found pirouetting on the ‘porch’ of their hive. Wings spread and spinning in sync, the bees introduce cool airflow through the hive. Likewise, in the

winter, bees group together inside the hive, and they shiver to maintain a winter temperature of about seventy degrees.

This hive-minded cooperation manifests itself in all colony operations. It stems from the understanding that the success of the colony is far more important than the survival of the individual.

An individual’s place in the hive is determined by complex hierarchy and division of labor based on both gender and age.

The Queen Kallie Huss

T

his is one of my earliest memories. It was 1996, and I was five years old. Like most kids, I knew that honeybees were the pollinators of the apples I loved to pick. However, they were also responsible for ambushes from coke cans, the proliferation of vegetables, and the death of Macualay Culkin’s character in My Girl. So I was still sorting out my feelings towards insects when, one day, a bee landed on my shoulder. In reality, she was harmless, but I imagined her menacing, and I had no easy means to defend myself without getting bee in my popsicle and popsicle on my shirt. I was left with no weapon but my five-year old face.

The bee walked tentatively towards my collar. I went in for the kill. With a warrior grimace, I lifted my shoulder and aimed to smash the bee with my chin. Unfortunately for us both, the bee left my shoulder, dodged my jaw, and stung me straight in the kisser. I dropped my popsicle and called for my mother. The bee peeled off to die. From that point on, I employed a policy of nervous pacifism. We (the bees and I) shared a common philosophy: if I left them alone, they would leave me alone.

The queen bee leaves the hive only twice in her life: first to be fertilized and again to lead the swarm in A Hiveminders bee hive a house-hunt if the hive is threatened or the colony is strong enough to split in two.

The ‘marital flight,’ during which the queen is fertilized by 12-15 drones, occurs when the queen is only ten days old.

The queen leaves the hive and pumps out pheromones to attract nearby drones. Fan club collected, she takes flight. The queen is fertilized mid-air, and six million sperm received in just a few hours will last her a lifetime of egglaying. The queen uses the sperm to fertilize some of her eggs, but not all of them. Unlike females, male bees are haploid organisms born from unfertilized eggs. They carry only the genes of the queen.

Back at the hive, the queen spends the rest of her existence laying over 1,000 eggs a day at a rate equaling an egg every minute! Given a hive’s astronomical birthrate, the population of a colony may seem small, but, like rock stars, honeybees live fast and die young.

Drones Male bees, or drones, are large-bodied and small-brained.

Because the queen controls the fertilization of her eggs, she can regulate the number of drones in the colony.

Drones make up a smaller percentage of the colony’s population because their contributions are limited. Drones neither forage nor participate in hive maintenance. Often, they are too lazy even to feed themselves. Their entire lives are devoted to the fertilization of the queen. With this end in mind, they spend their days patrolling the skies, waiting

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of the University of Puget Sound for a queen to embark on her marital flight. Because of their inferior senses, they sometimes become lost on the hunt, return to the wrong hive, and are incorporated there.

Once the queen has been fertilized, a change in her pheromone levels indicates to the colony that the drones are no longer needed. Worker bees become increasingly hostile to their large and lazy brethren. In August, they start dropping hints. Mid-autumn, the eviction process begins.

Drones don’t actually have stingers, so they are rendered defenseless to the workers who bully the drones, pull at their antennae, deprive them of food, and eventually force them from the hive. If the drones attempt re-entry, they are bitten and stung. Outside the hive, the drones quickly starve or freeze to death.

Worker Bees It is left to the females, the worker bees, to power and provide for the hive. The olfactory senses of young workers are yet unequipped for foraging, so these bees are relegated to household chores like defense, maintenance, and caretaking.

of nature beekeepers sometimes exploit. The hexagonal shape of the cells also minimizes surface area.

Nurse bees navigate these cells constantly as they wait on the drones and tend to the brood. It takes a team of five workers to feed just one drone. Other workers clean the hive, carrying off the corpses of drones forcibly expelled from the hive and cleaning up the various casualties of hive life. Corpse control can be a heavy job – the life of a honeybee is a short one. A worker’s lifespan lasts between one and four months while drones die upon fertilization or perish at the end of the summer season. The queen is a hardiest of bees. Her lifespan can stretch up to five years.

Even when a younger and more capable queen replaces her, the workers care for her until her death.

Foraging: the Honey Hunt

Wikimedia Commons

When a young hive worker is physically mature, she moves on from hive chores. Honeybees are famous foragers. In keeping with the division of labor essential to a hive’s function, foraging bees are divided into honey collectors and pollen collectors. When a honey-collector dips her proA bee’s sting is its only defense, and so worker bees are boscis into the nectar pool at the base of a blossom, her the only ones capable of defending the hive. The queen bristly hind legs scrape pollen from its stamens, and pollen herself boasts a fatal sting, but grains cling to her coat. They even in mortal peril she won’t are incidentally spread to other waste her venom on an outside flowers as she makes her honey threat. Her sting is reserved to rounds. Pollen-collectors are not fight other queens. Worker bees interested in nectar. When these fly at invaders, aiming for dark honeybees arrive at a flower, spots like the ears, eyes, and they use their mandibles and mouth. When a worker bee inforelegs to scrape protein-rich jects her sting, she is literally pollen grains from its stamens. disemboweled. Her tail tears The pollen is moistened with the away, so there is nothing to honey stores from the forager’s keep her guts in her abdomen, stomach and becomes lodged in and she dies. Worker bees proher sticky coat. As the forager tect their brood and honey from flies from flower to flower, her hive-hunters like wasps, ants, legs comb plant dust from her mice, bears, tigers, armadillos, back and belly. Her hind legs raccoons, and birds. Hive-huntmold the pollen grains, snowers attack the bees nest using a ball-style, and the mixture is deWorking hard. Getting covered in yellow sperm. variety of tactics. Most sophisposited in small depressions on ticated are those of the African each leg called ‘pollen baskets’. honey badger. The badger tracks honeyguide birds to lo- Full pollen baskets resemble large yellow leg warmers. At cate bees nest, tears the hive apart with his claws, and each flower, the pollen basket sheds a few grains so that then releases his stink to stun the insects. the pollen from one flower fertilizes the ovaries of another, and genetic diversity abounds. Back at the hive, proteinIf the hive is damaged, worker bees are also responsible rich pollen is stored in the honeycomb and comprises the for its reconstruction and maintenance. Their bodies se‘bee bread’ that nourishes the brood. crete wax, which they soften between their jaws and then mold into cells to house honey, pollen and brood. The formation of hexagonal honeycomb cells is an exercise Nectar and pollen are the staples of the honeybee’s diet. in geometric optimization. Each hexagon shares its sides In foraging for resources, the worker bee also facilitates with surrounding cells, so given equal depth, each cell will the pollination of flowers. Humans are the third wheel contain the same volume of honey and provide the same in this symbiotic relationship. Honeybees contribute enorspace for a larva to grow. Larvae, like goldfish, grow to fill mously to world food security. For some commodities, it their surroundings. Larger cells yield bigger bees- a fact is estimated that a lack of honeybees would reduce crop

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yields 90% in size, quality, or quantity . Estimates vary by crop and season, but having a working hive nearby is said to increase a garden’s productivity by about 30%. All things considered, “35% of the human diet is thought to benefit from pollination”2. The economic implications are also great. In the United States, honeybee foraging activity contributes $15-20 billion to agriculture each year3. Our dependence on pollinators is only increasing. Despite the value of pollination, bees are most often kept for honey.

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Honey is an expertly-processed and carefully-refined substance. It is also, technically, bee vomit. The honeybee has multiple stomachs. The first is called the honey stomach, or honey sac. It takes hundreds of trips and sixty whole honey stomachs to produce one thimble-full of honey. The honey stomach is not meant for digestion. When a worker bee is hungry, she opens a valve and releases the contents of her honey stomach into her gut for digestion. The majority of her stores are shared among the colony. When a forager returns home, she empties her honey stomach.

The nectar she has collected is processed into honey through a series of regurgitations that reduce its water content significantly and alter its chemical composition.

Regurgitation is not only a friendly way of food sharing; it is a necessary process for turning nectar into honey.

The honey sac contains an enzyme called invertase, which converts sucrose into glucose and fructose. Some of that glucose is then broken down into gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide by an enzyme called glucose oxidase. Once it is regurgitated, worker bees beat their wings over small droplets of honey to generate airflow and decrease moisture content. The final product is acidic, antibacterial, and, most importantly, inhospitable. Neither fungi nor microbes can grow in honey. It is the only food that never spoils.

Paleontologists excavating the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs have found 2,000-year-old honey. Apparently it still tastes great.

Bees and Medicine

Here at Puget Sound, Dr. Robin Foster is currently researching the use of honeybees in diagnostics. Foster’s lab bees are taught to ‘smell’ cancer. Conditioned to associate certain chemical scents with a sucrose reward, a trained honeybee will hypothetically extend its proboscis when presented with urine from cancer patients. If significant distinction exists between urine samples of cancer patients and normal urine samples, the hyper-sensitive odor receptors on the bees’ antennae will detect it, Foster says.

This is not to say that the honeybees themselves will be used in diagnosis. The concept is not to pee in a cup, serve that cup to a colony, and note the bees’ reactions.

Rather, the bees will tell us whether there is any use in pursuing diagnostic testing using urine samples. Currently, diagnosing cancer requires a multitude of invasive and/or expensive tests. If cancer does indeed leave a chemical signature in urine, less expensive, noninvasive diagnostic tests could be implemented. Foster focuses specifically on ovarian cancer, a cancer whose fatality rate is due in large part to the difficulty in detecting it. Foster compares current diagnostics to looking for a needle in a whole group of haystacks. If her honeybee project is successful, she says, we will at least know which haystack to start with.

Bees and War The domestication of bees allowed for their use as weapons. Instances dating back to 72 BC report use of toxic honey to poison enemies, of swarms poured into tunnels to await enemy invaders. During The Middle Ages, the flinging of skeps (straw beehives) was not an uncommon defense strategy. In 940, Otto I, king of the Franks and Saxons, noted that skep-flinging met with special success against cavalry; bee stings sent horses into a frenzy.

Bees were similarly exploited as offensive tools. An English manuscript on military weapons from 1326 features sketches of a windmill designed to catapult hives over castle walls. Bee stings were a means of torture and punishment. Offenders were dipped in honey, exposed to an aggressive swarm, and sometimes stung to death. Modern

Wikimedia Commons

The antibacterial properties of honey have long been useful in medicine. Since the Middle Ages, honey has been used to dress wounds and preserve corpses. As a natural antibiotic, honey also helps to prevent ulcer damage and treat bronchitis. It has even been proposed as a means to fight meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a particularly hardy staph infection common in hospitals. Recent studies have shown that MRSA bacteria cannot grow in culture with manuka honey, honey made from the nectar

of New Zealand’s manuka bush4. Other bee products benefit humans as well. Some swear by the life-lengthening abilities of royal jelly, the nourishment reserved for queen bees whose lifespan is 5-10 times longer than the average worker. In 2003, Fred Hale, the oldest man in the United States at 113, attributed his longevity to a spoonful of pollen taken with every meal.

Look, Honey! [Insert your own bee-, honey-, or sugar-related pun here.]

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of the University of Puget Sound military tactics have moved beyond skep-flinging, but recent use of honeybees in warfare is no less bizarre.

On the battlefield, brain has finally triumphed over brawn.

Their skeps are no longer flung, their defensive instincts are no longer exploited, and the bees themselves are no longer driven to disembowel themselves in the faces of charging horses. Instead, modern technology looks to the honeybee to locate land mines. Bees are the new bomb dogs. Their keen olfactory senses are capable of detecting

sets aside annually to fund projects that forward sustainable goals. With this money, Noah purchased and constructed the two hives that stand today in the President’s Woods, north of Thompson Hall and west of the giant log. Noah recognizes the many benefits of beekeeping on campus. The hives “provide an avenue through which students can learn and be trained to be beekeepers,” he explains. This year, the Hiveminders harvested five gallons of honey. Noah also recognizes the environmental benefits of beekeeping as an inexpensive and rewarding activity that eliminates dependence on store-bought sugars and increases the fecundity of local gardens. For students and faculty interested in pursuing beekeeping, Noah recommends visiting the Pierce County Beekeeper’s Association, a local organization that offers classes on beekeeping, or contacting the Hiveminders club at hiveminders@ups.edu.

Al Vallecorsa

Beekeeping and Sustainability

I’m ready for my close-up! Fine detail of a bee head.

chemicals at trace levels as low as a thirty parts per trillion, and their landings are too light to trigger explosives.

Since 1999, researchers at the University of Montana have been working in cooperation with the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop honeybee-based mine-finding technology. The premise is a simple one: the honeybee is a skilled learner. In the laboratory, the honeybee learns to associate the “odors of interest” with a sugar reward, so in the field when she smells landmine, she thinks breakfast. Equipped with a microscopic radio packs, trained honeybees taste chemical traces in the air, seek the source of the scent, and then return to the hive to communicate its location. The result: radar generates a map indicating density of bees that also reveals locations of landmines. The technology is not yet perfect. Bees refuse to work in inclement weather, and they will not fly at night. But the results, so far, are promising. In 2002, University of Montana researcher Jerry Bromenshenk’s bees were performing at with a 1.0–2.5 percent probability of false positive and less than one percent probability of false negative. This progress indicates hope for clearing mine fields past and present.

Beekeeping on Campus The University of Puget Sound boasts two hives of its own.

The Hiveminders apiary club started in 2009 when student Noah Brod applied for and received a sustainability grant, allowing him a small portion of the $10,000 the University

Beekeepers led by Tammy Horn are working to establish a ‘honey belt’ in the Appalachian region. Horn hopes to use honeybees to reclaim land ravaged by the coal mining industry. She builds hives at former mine sites and plants fields that will flower three seasons of the year. The project boasts economic advantages as well. Her operation even seeks to employ former miners as beekeepers.

Appalachia’s ‘honey belt’ will introduce beekeeping as a sustainable activity and provide supplemental income for families struggling to make ends meet.

On the science side, in Minnesota, Marla Spivak has recently won a MacArthur grant to continue her research in the area of hygienics. Hygienic bees are those that naturally recognize and eradicate disease and infestation quickly and efficiently. Spivak is studying hygienics to breed bees resistant to diseases in effort to render obsolete the use of some pesticides and antibiotics in beekeeping.

Bees play an integral role in securing human health and happiness, they are the world’s most important pollinator, and yet their complexities are neither fully understood nor appreciated. For further information, consult The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting by Eva Crane, The Dancing Bees by Karl von Frisch, or, with permission, supervision, and adequate safety attire, look inside a hive near your. It’s like seeing thoughts walking around a brain.

1. vanEngelsdorp D., & M.D. Meixner. (2009) A historical review of managed honey bee populations in Europe and the United States and the factors that may affect them.

Journal of Invertebrate Pathology [accessed online].

2. Klein, A., Vaissiere, R., Cane, et al. (2007) Importance of pollinators in changing landscapes for world crops. Proc Biol Sci. 274(1608): 303–313.

3. Morse, R. & Calderone, N. (2000) Crop pollination from native bees at risk from agricultural intensification. Beeculture. http://bee.airoot.com/beeculture/pollination2000/pg1.html.

4. Molan, P. (1999) The role of honey in the management of wounds. Journal of Wound Care. 8(8):415-418.

Eva Crane. The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting, 1999.

Karl von Frisch. The Dancing Bees, 1970.

Tammy Horn. Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation, 2005.

Sue Hubbell. A Book of Bees, 1998.

Daberkow, S, P. Korb, F. Hoff. 2009. Structure of the U.S. Beekeeping Industry: 19822002. Journal of Economic Entomology 102(3): 868-886.

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Science in Context

Are You Colorblind?

N oah J acoby

Can you see the red sailboat in the first panel? You could be colorblind...

L

ook at the first panel of dots. Most of you can see the boat outline, right? The second panel has been edited the bottom portion of the image is the same, but the top has been modified to show what a red-green colorblind person would see. That’s how I see the picture. To me, as well as to 8% of men and 0.5% of women, there is no difference between the two panels.

Colorblindness is related to cells in the eye called cones. There are two types of vision cells: cones and rods.

Rods detect black and white light, and are far more sensitive than cones; rods can react to even a single photon.

While this doesn’t allow for color detection, rod cells allow vision at very low light levels (e.g., at night). Cones are more specialized: they become active with brighter light.

Human eyes have three types of cones; red, green, and

Try it at home!

Here’s a fun experiment to try at home that demonstrates the eye’s mechanism of color interpretation. You’ll need a colored light bulb, some squares of colorful construction paper, and a cardboard tube. Lay out all the pieces of construction paper on a table. Look through the cardboard tube so that you can only see one square of paper – a blue square, for example. The square is blue, right? Now shine a red light on the paper. Your brain will now perceive the blue-colored patch as purple, because it triggers both red and blue cones. But if you remove the tube to view the entire array of colorful squares, then all the colors will appear as they normally do. This is because the brain sees red triggered equally across a wide range of colors, and filters out the red light. Neat, huh?

blue, which detect low, medium, and high frequency light, respectively.

Colorblindness is caused by deficiencies or disorders in one or more of these cones. In a normally functioning cone, there are two ends to the cell: a detection end and a nerve end. The nerve end of the cell connects to the optic nerve, and leads back into the brain. All of these visual cells are constantly firing. Sight is triggered by a special protein called retinal at the detection end of the cone cell (or rhodopsin on a rod cell), which reacts to photons, causing the cone to stop firing. The brain detects this absence of a signal and translates it into an image.

A single cone, however, cannot, on its own tell the brain what color is present. Instead it conveys the intensity of color; the brain fills-in colors by making comparisons. If a certain wavelength of light triggers lots of red cones, and some of the green cones, the brain fills-in a dark orange — whereas in the opposite case (lots of green and few red), the brain would fill-in a light yellow.

In a colorblind person, one or more cone type isn’t working properly. In the case of a red-green colorblind person, the green cone could be entirely absent. When the brain makes comparisons between colors, it begins in the retina, which has three layers of cells. In the first layer, the cones are present. In the second layer, cells called opponent cells balance colors against each other; red is balanced against green and blue. Without the green signals, red is only balanced against blue, and green and red become very similar.

There are several categories of colorblindness, which vary according to the affected cone types and the severity of color loss. If red cones are missing or dysfunctional, an individual will be red-green colorblind. This condition is called Protanopia. Shades of colors that would

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of the University of Puget Sound normally excite both red and green cones (like yellow or orange) excite only green cones in protanopic individuals, causing this lower spectrum of light to appear more green.

A less severe condition, called Protanomaly, occurs, not when red cones are missing, but when they are damaged or less active than normal. This results in a condition that allows an individual to discern red and green colors, however, green signals will overwhelm the red when the two colors are placed near or on top of each other. Think of a green bush with red berries. A protanopic (red-missing) individual would not be able to see the red berries. A protanomalic (red-impaired) individual would also be unable to see the berries but, if the berries were removed from the bush, the protanomalic person would be able to identify the berries as red. The reverse effect is produced by the absence or impairment of green cones, called Deuteranopia and Deuteranomaly respectively. Blue absence (Tritatopia) and blue impairment (Tritanomaly) produce similar effects, but blue is replaced with purple, rather than with red or green. Individuals missing two cone types, have a condition called Monochromism, in which the person only sees colors of the remaining cone type. If genetics is really working against a person, all three cones can malfunction, causing Achromatopsia, which is true gray-scale colorblindness – this occurs in a very small number of people. In males, it requires four genes to malfunction (three on the X, one on the Y) and in females, it requires six.

Colorblindness is present in slightly less than 10% of the total human population.

This means that, in each one of your ten-person classes (applies only to students attending a liberal arts university) there is probably one person who is colorblind. That person could be you! But how would you know, for example, that you’re protanopic if you have no idea what the color red is supposed to look like? Well, first of all, if you are female, you probably don’t need to worry (your chances are about 1 in 200). For the rest of those unsure males, do not fret; scientists have developed several ways to test for colorblindness. The most common and basic method uses pseudoisochromatic (PIC) plates. PIC plates consist of many colorful dots arranged some kind of recognizable color pattern or shape, such as the sailboats at the beginning of this article. The pattern is usually visible to people with normal vision, and invisible to colorblind people. PIC plates, however, can only be used to determine if a person

has normal or colorblind vision – they cannot determine the degree or type of colorblindness.

The 100-Hue test is far more complex. Whereas PIC plates can be found anywhere – from an eye doctor’s office to Wikipedia – the 100 Hue test is far more specialized and expensive. The 100 Hue test uses 100 colored caps, each with a number on its backside corresponding to the color and shade of the cap. The testing individual is instructed to arrange the caps in four rows of 25 according to color and shade. The results are then fed into a computer program, which interprets the arrangements of the caps to accurately determine the degree and type of the examinee’s colorblindness. Even individuals with perfectly normal color vision can take the 100 Hue test, allowing them to determine which colors their eyes are most sensitive to and which they tend to confuse.

Between the simple PIC plates and the complicated 100 Hue tests lies the dichotomous colorblindness test. This test, despite its name, is not truly dichotomous. The test-taker is given two color patches and a slider to adjust the color of a patch.

The test-taker asked to adjust the color of one patch to match the color of the other. These tests are not 100% accurate, because even people with normal vision can confuse to similar shades. However, if an individual taking the dichotomous test consistently misses shades of a certain color, they can identify their specific type of colorblindness.

Unfortunately colorblindness is not preventable, however, recent breakthroughs in gene therapy have indicated that a cure may be in sight. Although it has not yet been tested in humans, researchers have successfully cured colorblindness in other primates. Jay Neitz, a researcher at Washington University, engineered a very unique virus capable of infecting green cone cells and altering their pigments to become red cone cells. Additionally, this virus was designed to be completely incapable of replicating, allowing the researchers to precisely control the number of green cells converted into red cells by altering the viral dosage. Neitz reported that within 20 weeks of treatment, the monkeys were able to tell the difference between green and red, and had higher success rates on colored light tests.

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Research Report

Summer Science Research Stephen Reller, Biology, 2012

“The photo depicts the sea star Pisaster ochraceus (common name: Ochre Sea Star). This past summer, professor Joel Elliott, Mary Krauszer, and I surveyed sea star populations around Puget Sound, San Juan Islands, and along the Washington coast. The purpose of this survey was to determine the color differentiation of Pisaster populations at different wave gradients. We observed that along the Washingon coast you find mostly rusty brown and orange colored individuals but as you move more towards Puget Sound, you find mostly light and dark purple individuals and some orange.”

Rachael Mallon, Biology, 2012

“I spent the summer with professor Peter Wimberger, studying the phylogeography of the only known glacially obligate animal, the iceworm. We collected iceworms from the southernmost known populations in the Cascades. In order to explore the possibility of reproductive isolation between the northern and southern lineages, I performed restriction digests on the iceworm DNA. The results of this project can provide important insight into the historical glacial and interglacial periods.”

Brooke Peaden, Physics, 2012

“My summer research project looked at how holes acoustically affected a brass disk depending on the size and the number of holes. The left photo shows how the image of the vibration mode of the cymbal was obtained by acousically driving the brass disk and recording the modes. Above is the photo taken using the speckle pattern interferometer and the image produced using the NEi Fusion Finite element software. Both images are of the (3,1) mode for a brass disk with six 1.25” holes.”

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of the University of Puget Sound

Krystle Pagarigan, Molecular and Cellular Biology, 2011

“My summer research was dedicated to the study of the protein Phosphatase of Regenerating Liver-1 (PRL-1). PRL-1 is over expressed in highly metastatic cancers, and as such can be used as a metastatic biomarker. Such a metastatic biomarker would be useful with regards to determining the severity of a cancer and figuring the proper course of therapeutic treatment. However, before PRL-1 can be utilized as such, its normal function in vivo must be understood-- as such I looked at where PRL-1 was localized under normal, non-cancerous conditions, as location often reflects function. These are all confocal images of Drosophila embryonic or larval tissue that has been immunostained: PRL-1 stains red, DNA stains blue.”

Robert Niese, Biology, 2011

“I spent the summer researching non-vocal communication in the common city pigeon, Columba livia. Recent discoveries suggest that many pigeon and dove species are capable of communicating with sounds produced by their wings. I monitored a flock of about 60 pigeons and observed their behavior each time an individual or group produced wing-sounds. Using video and audio recordings I am beginning to “decode” this wing-sound language. I also used museum specimens to take precise measurements of wings and feathers in search of morphologies that may be adapted for sound production. I found that the outermost primary feather in all city pigeons has a distinct notch and may have evolved to produce a whistling sound during rapid wing-beats. This is a collage of 40 frames from high speed video shot at 240 frames per second showing an adult male pigeon taking-off in alarm. These frames represent about 0.006 seconds of real-time flight.”

Emily Landeck, Biology, 2011

“This summer I spent a month in Chile conducting a population estimate on a threatened seabird, the DeFilipi’s Petrel.

This petrel is part of the Procellariformes seabird order and is classified as threatened by the IUCN red list – a comprehensive list of all known threatened and endangered species throughout the world. The DeFilippi’s Petrel (DFPE) is endemic to two island archipelagos in Chile and therefore is not found anywhere else in the world during breeding season, late July through September. This limited breeding range has the ability to largely impact the threat status of this species and it is thought that a combination of a limited range and a small population size can have detrimental effects on a species. The population estimate was conducted on the two islands, Santa Clara and Robinson Crusoe. As expected, we found that colonies of breeding individuals were only present in loose rock/boulder covered slopes – what we refer to as “scree” slopes.”

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Science in Contex t

Elements Book Club: Environmentally Relevant Reading

L isa K ant

The World Without Us - Alan Weisman What would happen if humans suddenly vanished from this planet? What would last as a reminder of our species? What would fall apart immediately if we weren’t there to watch over it? In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman attempts to answer these questions. Weisman pieces together many disciplines including biology, geology, environmental science, and archaeology, and sometimes pure speculation, to create a future Earth where humans no longer exist. Skyscrapers would tumble, our pet cats would turn into ferocious predators, petrochemical infernos would burn unchecked, and after a millennium or so the only evidence that we ever existed would be elevated carbon levels and tiny bits of ground-up plastic. The World Without Us shows just how devastating humans have been to the planet, and at the same time how resilient this planet is.

Cradle to Cradle - William McDonough and Michael Braungart While most books about global warming and the current environmental crisis have a somber and discouraging tone, this one is refreshingly upbeat.

Its message is simple: Rather than trying to be less bad, we should try to be good. That is, instead of designing cars that have low or no emissions, manufacturers should design cars that actually purify the air. Cradle to Cradle has some really awesome ideas: buildings that are designed like trees, factories with effluent streams that are cleaner than their intake, and (truly) biodegradable materials that could be tossed on the ground and replenish the soil. One concept the authors kept returning to was “upcycling” – creating products that are meant to be used over and over, but not necessarily for the same purpose. When a consumer finishes with a product, its materials could be used by the manufacturer to make a completely new product with a completely new function. On the whole I enjoyed Cradle to Cradle; it was refreshing to read something about the environment and consumption that wasn’t completely doom and gloom. Ironically, at the same time I found this book a little too optimistic. Some of the solutions, like the cars that clean the air, sound a little too far-fetched, at least for right now. They’ll probably work someday, but in the meantime some suggestions on how to be less bad for the planet would be nice.

Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails) - Matt Young and Paul K. Strode If you believe in evolution, but lack the specific facts to back up your argument, read this book. The authors provide a thorough defense of evolution using evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) and phylogeny. They also expose the flaws in creation science and intelligent design, debunking so-called evidence from what the authors call “pseudo-scientific” fields such as flood geology, which attempts to find geologic evidence for the Biblical flood. One of my favorite parts of the book is the section explaining how science works and how “pseudoscience” doesn’t. Scientists formulate a hypothesis based on observations and then design an experiment to test their hypothesis. “Pseudo-Scientists,” on the other hand, fit their observations to their explanations so that they see what they want to see. Although I’ve learned about the scientific method several times over the years, I found this section extremely informative and interesting. Another one of the highlights in Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails) is the chapter on human anatomy. It describes, among other things, the evolution of the knee. Our knees first developed when we walked on all fours, and they remain better suited for this purpose, or at least they weren’t “designed” for bipedal animals. This book is both entertaining and informative. Next time you’re in an argument with a creationist you’ll be able to do more than mumble vaguely about the fossil record.

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science - Natalie Angier Natalie Angier is the ultimate science writing overachiever.

In The Canon, she tackles biology, physics, chemistry, geology, and astronomy; plus the scientific method, probability and statistics, and measurement. This book is fast-paced, sometimes to the point of being too brief, but if you can keep up you’ll learn a lot. Angier interviews several scientists, and their enthusiasm for their subjects is palpable. I like to think of this book as a jumping-off point. There are loads of cool ideas in it, so you’re sure to find one you’re interested in and want to learn more about.

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of the University of Puget Sound Science in Contex t

Sob Story: What‘chu cryin’ ‘bout?

C helse a C orser -J ensen

I

t’s 11:55 on a Friday night, and you’re stuck in the library rushing to finish your term paper while all of your friends are out partying. The clock is ticking. Breathing a sigh of relief at 11:59:50 you push “submit.” Suddenly your computer screen turns blue and is unresponsive—not even a defibrillator can bring your paper back to life at this point. You burst into tears, drawing the attention of everyone around you, including that cute guy from your economics class.

Tears, stupid tears!

They always come when you least want them, and once the floodgates open there is little hope of stopping those tears from streaming down your face.

Nature is loaded with odd traits and behaviors, but the tearful sobbing that is thought to be unique to human primates is one of the most perplexing. The genetic mutation that resulted in a neuronal connection between the tear glands and the parts of the brain responsible for deep emotion, like all genetic mutations, was a mistake. But there must be some evolutionary advantage to teary-eyed crying, otherwise natural selection would have thrown it out long ago.

There are three kinds of tears, which differ in function and composition, together working to maintain the body’s state of equilibrium, or homeostasis.

Basal tears form continuously, bathing the surface of our eyeballs every time we blink. These tears are made up of mucus to adhere to the eye surface, water and salt in a ratio similar to that of the rest of the body, antibodies to defend against foreign pathogens, enzymes to destroy any microbial invaders, and a thin layer of oil to keep the tears in the eye.

Reflex tears are produced when the eye is hit by wind, sand, pokey things, or the sulfenic acids that are created when cutting or crushing an onion. These tears are similar in composition to basal tears. However, because they are designed to break down and annihilate eyeball intruders, reflex tears flow in greater amounts and have higher concentrations of antibodies and enzymes.

The third kind, emotional tears, secreted in moments of intense feeling—sometimes joy, but more often sadness— have a chemical makeup all their own. William H. Frey II, a biochemist, has found that emotional tears carry 20 to 25 percent more protein and have four times the amount of potassium than reflex tears. Additionally, they have 30 times the concentration of manganese than human blood

serum and are chock-full of hormones, such as adrenocorticotropin (ACTH), and prolactin.

The proportions in this chemical cocktail are correlated with the emotions associated with crying. Manganese exists in high concentrations in the brains of people suffering from chronic depression, and high ACTH is indicative of high anxiety and stress levels. The level of prolactin, the hormone responsible for controlling tear release, is nearly 60% higher in women’s bodies than in men’s as it also regulates breast milk production. This may explain why, on average, women cry five times a month and men cry about once every four weeks. Shedding emotional tears is the body’s way of flushing out some of these chemicals from the body, which is thought to contribute to the sense of relief we often feel after “having a good cry.” Physiologically, crying may serve to flip the switch from sympathetic to parasympathetic nervous system responses. The sympathetic nervous systems fires messages to prepare our bodies to either stand our ground and fight or to bolt, then the parasympathetic system brings us back to normal.

The maintenance of emotional homeostasis by shedding tears doesn’t seem to make good evolutionary sense. However, our social nature may provide a few clues. In order to keep up with the increasing brain size and higher intelligence, the evolution from early hominid to human must have favored traits that improve communication—speech, facial expressions, body language…and tears. Tears send an unmistakable signal that the feelings behind them are genuine and that all of our defenses are down. The intense emotional bonds facilitated by crying may have helped humans band together into stronger, more successful communities than they would have otherwise.

In the past six million years, some of the biggest changes in our ancestral lineage have taken place from the neck up. The increasing size and complexity of the human brain, along with the expressive musculature of the face, helped us better communicate with one another and convey emotion. Somehow, the parts of the brain associated with this emotional expression became connected to the lacrimal glands above each of our eyes. Crying may have begun as a biological mechanism for reducing stress, but it has acquired an important social function—conveying emotions beyond the reach of words.

It may seem, when you cry in public, that your body has made a mistake; those tears should have been saved for later, you think. It is more likely, however, that you have reached a level of stress that is dangerous to your health.

You should let it out. It’s okay to cry.

Chip, W. (2006) Why Do We Cry?. Scientific American Mind 17 (6): 44-51

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Science in Contex t

Really Slimy Sex M ary K rauszer

How Hermaphrodites do It

Upside-down. Backwards. Hanging from a rope, all covered in lube. Slugs seem like relatively unimpressive creatures, composed mostly of slime, squish, and your mother’s daffodils, but where nature rations good looks, she delivers kinky compensation in spades. As hermaphrodites, slugs are uniquely concerned with the exchange of genetic material, or lack thereof. Many species are known to reproduce asexually when necessary (talk about desperate), but finding a mate is much preferred. It is in these two-goo encounters that the exciting stuff comes out, literally.

a penis from the genital opening toward the front of the mantle. Copulation occurs when these organs exchange genetic material, sperm passing from each to the other, followed by withdrawal. Beyond this standard schedule, speciation has given rise to some astounding variations on the slug-sex theme. Some of my favorites are described below.

Anatomy of the typical garden slug. Note: mucus has not been labeled. Assume it is everywhere.

Let’s start with some basic anatomy. Slugs are of the phylum mollusca and the class gastropoda, which characterizes them by their large single foot and that adorable double set of sensory tentacles. Just behind the eyestalks we find the mantle, another mollusk signature, which houses the sex organs, usually both male and female in a single individual.

Slugga Sutra Typical slug mating can be broken down into four steps: precourtship, courtship, copulation, and withdrawal. Slime trails flavored with “Come and get me!” hormones initiate a patient pursuit as the slugs begin the precourtship behavior of trailing and following. After up to 10 hours of slinking around and getting in the mood for getting in the mood, courtship begins. The slugs finally make physical contact—encircling, nibbling, and excreting exceptional amounts of mucus onto each other. Toward the end of this junior high school dance encounter, each slug everts

The common European Red Slug, Arion rufus mid-copulation. The white blobs with a blue-ish tint are penises.

Leopard Lovin’: Don’t get hit in the face

The leopard slug, Limax maximus, makes some interesting edits to the basic steps (which, thanks to David Attenborough, have made them YouTube stars).

First, in the pursuit of precourtship, the leading slug scales a vertical surface, taking the pair to some kind of shelf or overhang, such as the underside of a branch. From here they do all the standard slug-cuddling, until suddenly they separate from the branch and slide down a rope of strong mucus, usually 10-30cm long. Suspended in midair (most Upside-down, hanging from a commonly at human mucus rope: for experts only. eye level*) the leopard Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons

Slug Anatomy

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of the University of Puget Sound slug penises, which are as long as, if not longer, than their body, are everted, wrapping around each other and continually expanding until they form a translucent, orb-like penis flower. Be sure to watch out for that while walking through the woods! After copulation, the sex organs are retracted safely within the mantle and one slug falls to the ground, while the other eats its way up the mucus rope, recovering the precious water lost to its costly production.

of withdrawal: apophallation, or the oral amputation of one or both of the partner’s penises in order to separate postcopulation. This behavior is not uncommon in the Ariolimax genus to which the banana slug belongs. Interestingly, this rather unfortunate end doesn’t seem to discourage banana slugs from jumping back on the sex wagon. They are able to continue the mating season as females and can re-grow a penis for the next annual apophallation.

The genus Deroceras includes most generic small garden slugs, some of which have made some amusing additions to the courtship stage and some cutbacks in copulation. Specifically, Deroceras gorgonium, a common grey slug you might see on a Puget Sound sidewalk at night, has the most branched and largest penial gland of the genus, which they like to wave around, literally. Courtship for these slimers includes about 9-15 hours of circling each other, penises erect and waving, occasionally trashing violently toward each other. Partners are often struck in the face, either by the tail or the erect organ. These blows to the face are followed by periods of inaction, prolonging courtship. Finally, after this unique foreplay, the sarcobela at the base of their genital complex make contact and sperm is excreted. Copulation usually lasts 1-5 seconds.

The branch-like top of the penial gland is then used to distribute the secreted material over the partner’s body surface—like a nice slimy pat on the back.

Banana Banging: Apophallation

Wikimedia Commons

The Next Generation

Uncommon Copulation: You will get hit in the face

Have you ever wondered where tapioca balls come from? I’ll give you a hint: they don’t grow on trees...

The genetic material so carefully exchanged in these imaginative methods of intercourse will be packaged into eggs and laid in a cool, moist place to mature. As little as two weeks later, anywhere from tens to hundreds of baby slugs will emerge, ready to continue their parents’ legacy of creative coition, as the orally fixated acrobatic deviants they were meant to be.

Wikimedia Commons

Banana slugs are a popular favorite in the Pacific Northwest, known for their alarmingly good impersonation of snot and their anesthetic effects when licked by daring hikers (though I caution that they can carry salmonella).

Banana slugs are also known for their particular practice

*This is not altogether true. In fact, mating leopard slugs were observed by students Kyle Wenholz and Evan Arkin on the University of Puget Sound campus, outside the Thompson science building, on a structure that was only about three feet tall.

Wikimedia Commons

Leonard, J. (2006) Sexual selection: lessons from hermaphrodite mating

Banana Slug foreplay usually involves hours of tender nibbling. I wonder if their radula get numb...

systems. Integrative and Comparative Biology 46 (4): 349–367 Reise, H. (2007) A review of mating behavior in slugs of the genus Deroceras (Pulmonata: Agriolimacidae). American Malacologist Bulletin 23: 137-156 Reise, H., S. Visser, J. M. C. Hutchinson (2007) Mating behaviour in the terrestrial slug Deroceras gorgonium: is extreme morphology associated with extreme behaviour? Animal Biology 57 (2): 197-215

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine  

Benvenuti al

A L L I U M

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l’umore migliore scientifiche di tutto il mondo

Avviso: The following pages are for entertainment purposes only. If you are under XXI years of age, proceed with caution as some material may interfere with your moral compass. Our sincerest apologies to Maestro Galileo for defiling this image and butchering our Italian.

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of the University of Puget Sound The Allium

The Best Science Videos of YouTube

“Bill Nye the Science Guy – ‘Don’t Try This At Home’”

KK Park er

pending copious amounts of time on YouTube searching for random videos is just one of the many skills that college students learn today. There’s nothing like taking a trip down memory lane and watching a Backstreet Boys music video, or laughing until you pee while watching a panda sneeze. Although, being such a science geek, the best of all is searching for science videos. Whether they are helping you study for an exam or used as a source of entertainment for a couple of hours, there is a considerable amount of enjoyment when it comes to hunting for the rare gem that is The Science Video. So, to cut back on that pesky searching time, I have compiled a list of fantastic YouTube videos spanning from the witty to the awe-inspiring.

www.youtube.com

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Chemical reactions are magic, but what’s more magical is a familiar face in this Bill Nye music video. See if you can spot him! Watching this video is also really nostalgic and brings you back to those good ol’ days where we all dreamed of being astrophysicists and teachers.

“The Presidents of the United States of America – Volcano”

I decided to start you out with a light-hearted “science” video. The “Look Around You” series was made by the BBC as a funny and quirky representation of science; just don’t use it as a study tool! There are a plethora of others that include Maths, Germs, Iron, and Computer Games. They are all worth watching, but Water is by far the most fantastic one. Just remember: nitrogen and water does NOT make whisky!

“Tiktaalik (Your Inner Fish)” A paleontologist/anatomist by the name of Neil Shubin discovered Tiktaalik, a crocodile-like creature that is claimed to be the “missing link in the tree of life.”1 Found at Ellesmere Island, Canada, Tiktaalik is an evolutionary intermediate between a fish and a tetrapod and has characteristics of both, which is a pivotal discovery for the field of evolutionary biology. This music video has a song written about the discovery of this creature and a model of him roaming the Penn State campus.

Okay, so this isn’t exactly a science video, but it is super cool! Washington state’s very own rock group The Presidents of the United States of America singing a song about volcanoes. Nothing could be better. In addition to being incredibly catchy, this music video talks about the Cascade mountain range, which is home to about 20 volcanoes, with five located in Washington, including our guardian, Mt. Rainier. These young mountains are formed by the subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate under the North American plate. Check out more information about the Cascades at the USGS website.

“Inner Life of the Cell”

www.youtube.com

www.youtube.com

“Look Around You – ‘Water’”

This is by far the most epic visualization of an immune response ever. It was put together by Harvard University to represent the signal transduction and protein formation and secretion in a leukocyte at sites where inflammation occurs. I had to add this to the article because it is by far my favorite biology video.

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine “Protein Synthesis: An Epic on the Cellular Level”

Different frequencies being transmitted through the Tesla coil enable it to make the notes that you hear in this video, and the high voltages running through the copper heads make the huge lightening-like sparks you see. From my perspective, though, it’s magic. This combination makes for an awesome show, especially when the Super Mario Bros. theme song is involved!

What could be more enjoyable than watching a bunch of hippies with balloons reenacting the synthesis of proteins?

Nothing, and that’s exactly what you have with this video.

It was made in the early ‘70s at Stanford by Paul Berg, a Nobel Prize winner for research in nucleic acids, and associates.

www.youtube.com

“Twin Musical Tesla Coils Playing Mario Bros.”

“Our Mr. Sun (Excerpts) and Hemo the Magnificent” These two clips are from a series of movies made in the ‘50s for elementary school science classes. Unlike the joking of the BBC’s “Look Around You” videos, these were legitimate learning tools of the ‘50s, which my father used to watch when he was a child. Science certainly has come so far since then!

“Marie Curie Actions: Chemical Party”

Everyone likes destruction, and even better is the destruction of a two-thousand-dollar piece of electronic genius.

What this video lacks in scientific concepts, it more than compensates for in rpm’s and torque in this bad boy of a blender. Watch for the iPad dust though: “Don’t breathe this!”

“Mitosis in Real Time” This is one you’ll have to watch a couple of times because it is just so cool. There is a lot of stuff going on in the beginning that you can’t see – the nuclear envelope breaking up, centrioles forming and migrating to the poles – but what you can see – the good stuff – occurs seconds later.

Metaphase abruptly begins and before you know it, spindle fibers are forcing the cell apart and mitosis is complete!

www.youtube.com

“Will It Blend? - iPad”

I stumbled upon this video while searching for chemistry videos. The video depicts a couple of properties of the periodic table, but in creepy and fantastic ways. My favorite part is potassium “reacting” with water. Of course all the alkali metals have violent reactions with water and the intensity of these reactions increases as you travel down the period, so it’s a good thing francium wasn’t there! If you want to see more on reactions of alkali metals and water, search “Brainiac Alkali Metals.”

www.youtube.com

“Spectacular footage from above the volcanic crater” and “Iceland volcano eruption” by Sean Stiegemeir

“Once Upon A Pluton” I wish I knew more about geology so I could describe this to you all. All I can say is talking rocks are fun and so is geology!

I couldn’t choose just one of these amazing videos of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption (try saying that ten times fast), so I just decided to include both in this article. In the first, you get to see the huge ash plumes that caused European airports so much trouble back in May. In addition, you get to see the lightning that is caused by all the static! energy in the plume. The second video is just really pretty and you get to see some beautiful Icelandic landscape.

1 David Fox in a welcome message for the Penn Reading project. http://www.upenn.edu/nso/prp/fish/index.html 2 USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory. http://vulcan. wr.usgs.gov/

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of the University of Puget Sound The Allium

Science Has Never Tasted So Good: Key-Out Your Next Northwest Style Seasonal Ale Tamara L ogsdon

E

very beer has its place. You just have to decide what your taste buds are willing to try next.

Origins

David Pendleton Tamara Logsdon

England and Ireland knew what they were doing when it If you’re low on change, hosting a party, or you just don’t came to crafting the perfect beverage for those cold, dreary want fields of hops and mountains of malt flooding your days across the pond. The first dark beer was crafted in next beer, look no further than the trusty Keystone or Natu- the early 18th century in London and was highly favored ral Ice to fill your cups. But if you’re standing, staring at because it was worthy of being a meal in itself. It was here the barren space in your fridge, wondering which gleaming that the porter was born along with its stronger, darker brown bottles will make this a “no vacancy” haven for your sibling, the stout. taste buds, opt for a selection of beers fit for the season.

If you’re planning on going out to the bars, don’t open your While weather remains just about the same, some five thouwallet for that PBR on tap. It will always be there. Avoid the sand miles east, Northwest brewers desired something a “I’ll have what he’s having” or the “whichever tap I might be little more unique and with a tastier bite. Fortunately, they pointing at is good enough” excuses because you’re unfamiliar were in just the right place. Brewing used to follow the seaor overwhelmed sons when inby the selecgredients betion.

Although came ripe in the there are more fall and ready than two hunfor harvest. Not dred breweries only were these between Oregon beers packed and Washington, with fresh inthere is order to gredients, they this chaos and went superbly you can find it well with the in the following rich foods of pages.

At the harvest time end, use the diwith their charchotomous key acteristic super of Northwest hoppy and bitstyle seasonal ter notes. The ales to ‘key out’ Northwest is your next gratihome to some fying, mouthwaof the greatest tering beverage! beers in these So many brews to think about! From left to right: an ale, a porter, and a stout. varieties and

‘Tis the Season for a Seasonal Now, it’s that time of year when you might be craving something stronger, darker, and spicier, and I’m not referring to your love life. Think instead of a hearty pint of porter, stout, or seasonal winter ale. Don’t panic at the thought of having to find a fork and knife to tackle the “liquid bread” of the beer world. From the Oregon Brewer’s Guild, “winter beers typically offer a higher alcohol content, traditionally for the warming effect but perhaps also to further the festive seasonal activities. Often dark, malty and slightly sweet with coffee or chocolate tones, winter ales, stouts and porters provide comfort and cheer.” Are you interested yet? I thought so.

the world’s largest producer of hops. How is that for washing the rain away?

Taste the Science The Pacific Northwest is home to a fine selection of awardwinning crafted microbrews, where much pride goes into each pint. But don’t think the brewmasters leave their wisdom and success to the beer Gods: this is all science! There is a smattering of schools around the world that offer a Bachelor’s degree in Brewing Science, but you don’t need to go to that extent to understand the behind-the-scenes of a good beer. The next high quality beer that will hopefully be filling your next pint is made from four ingredients: water,

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

Photo Services/Hattie Lindsley

malted barley, hops, and yeast, with the exception of seasonal beers, which may also include coffee, chocolate, anise, coriander, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, licorice, pumpkin spices, among many others.

For a porter, stout, or winter ale, these ingredients are crucial for that “comfort and cheer” you’re longing to feel. A little simplification of the biotechnology, microbiology, and chemistry that goes into the brewing process will show you how.

Water: A major ingredient in beer and the brewing process itself. It seems simple enough, but the chemistry of water can actually significantly affect the outcome of the beer.

A “hard” water contains unfiltered minerals and positively influences both the taste and brewing efficiency. If the water is “soft,” a beer recipe might call for NaCl and CaSO4.

Hops: The essential ingredient for any Northwest beer. Hops are the cone-like flower of the female hop vine Humulus lupulus, which produces the resin Lupulin Oil that gives beer its bitter flavor and “hoppy” aroma. Broadly classified into two groups, the Noble hop variety is utilized for its low bitterness and pleasant aroma and flavor while the High-alpha hop variety produces a higher bitterness and less pleasant aroma. Hops were originally introduced to the brewing process to inhibit the growth of bacteria, maintain flavor stability, and help retain the foam of the beer, but now they additionally serve the purpose of flavor and aroma.

The overall bitterness of a beer is measured with the International Bittering Units scale, commonly called IBUs – the higher the rating, the “hoppier” the beer.

Yeast: Regarded as the most important ingredient in beer brewing, yeast brings everything together. These living creatures, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and S. uvarum, which number in the thousands of different domestic strains, are responsible for the conversion of sugar into alcohol and CO2 during the fermentation stage. Yeast is also the final component that determines the flavor of the beer.

Need to know more? Check out these sites: www.ratebeer.com, www.oregonbeer.org, www.washingtonbrewersguild.org, www.beeradvocate.com, www.wyeastlab.com

Tamara Logsdon

Malted barley: Harvested from the grain that comes from the barley plant, this is the key ingredient from which the rest of the beer develops. The germination process converts the grain’s starch into simple sugars, which is accomplished by diastase enzymes that the grain produces. The germination and drying stages capture the fermentable sugars,

soluble starch, and the diastase enzymes for brewing. The next step, termed “mashing,” turns the barley into granular sized pieces, which are then mixed with hot water to dissolve the starch, sugar, and enzymes. This is also the stage during which the extra “essences” of seasonal beers are added, depending on the desired style and flavor.

Deck the hall with ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall! You know you’ve had one too many when...

of the University of Puget Sound

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I have selected only the highest rated beers for your satisfaction. Read through to see which ones get your mouth watering, judge a good beer from a bad one, or show off your knowledge to your friends! A couple beers (Kona Pipeline Porter and Alaskan Smoked Porter) might look a little out of place in my “Northwest-Only” beer guide, but trust me, you’ll be glad they’re there. If you’ve never used a dichotomous key, here’s how to get started: If you answer “yes” to the first question (a), follow the number at the end of that line to the next section of questions corresponding to that number. If you answer “no” to the first question, jump to the next question in that section (b) and follow the number at the end of that line.

Continue answering “yes” or “no” until you reach a description that makes you say, “Damn, I want to try that beer!”

1 a. Do you want to try a Porter or Stout (darker)? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 1 b. Do you want to try a winter ale or seasonal IPA (lighter)? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2 a. If you desire a beer that goes well with dessert or a hearty meal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2 b. If you desire a beer that is a meal in itself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3 a. If you desire the taste of cascading hops and bitterness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 3 b. If you desire a beer with essence of winter and loaded with spices.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 4 a. If you desire a classic Porter with a roasted malt and barley flavor that is easy to drink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deschutes Black Butte Porter or Elysian Perseus Porter 4 b. If you desire a porter that adds complex flavors to its silky roasted malt body. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 5 a. If you desire a porter that tastes like dessert, with outstanding flavors of coffee, chocolate, and/or vanilla. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rogue Mocha Porter, Kona Pipeline Porter, or Hop Valley Vanilla Porter 5 b. If you desire a porter with a satisfyingly smooth smokey flavor. . . . . . . . . . . . . Alaskan Smoked Porter 6 a. If you desire a classic American stout with a rich, deep flavor of roasted malts, espresso, and a light bitterness bite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rogue Shakespeare Stout, Pike XXXXX Stout or Deschutes Obsidian Stout 6 b. If you desire something stronger or with more unique flavors and complexities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 7 a. If you desire a stout that has distinct notes of espresso or chocolate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 7 b. If you desire something stronger, with more distinct characters and complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 8 a. If you desire a stout with sweet distinct notes of espresso. . . . . . . . .Oakshire Overcast Espresso Stout 8 b. If you desire a big, well balanced stout with an emphasis on chocolate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Rogue Chocolate Stout, Pelican Tsunami Stout, Elysian Dragonstooth Stout, or Dick’s Imperial Stout 9 a. If you desire a ridiculously smooth-sipping stout with a full bodied flavor. . . . . . . . . . .Ninkasi Oatis Oatmeal Stout 9 b. If you’re looking for a stout that will blow your mind with its magnitude of complexity . . . . . . . . . . .10 10 a. If you desire a stout that will prove its strength, with a unique blend of raisin, grape, fig, coffee, chocolate, and cocoa flavors.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Rogue Imperial Stout 10 b. If you desire a stout that masks its strength in deep, complex flavors of smoke, licorice, molasses, bourbon, and dark dried fruit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deschutes The Abyss 11 . .

11 . .

a. . . b. . .

If you desire an ale with a nice blend of citrus and hops, and that tastes of fruitcake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Full Sail Wreck the Halls If you desire a complex beer with fruity, caramelly, wooden aromas and flavor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rogue Yellow Snow

12 a. If you desire to try a classic Northwest winter ale with a well-rounded flavor of hops and malt along with the smooth addition of spices. . . . . . . . . .Full Sail Wassail, Redhook Winterhook, or Bridgeport Ebenezer Ale 12 b. If you desire something stronger or with more unique flavors and complexities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 13 a. If you desire a medium-strength winter ale with distinct characteristics of sweet fruits, nuts, spice, and a balance of malt and hops. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Deschutes Jubelale, Pyramid Snow Cap, Elysian Birfröst, Double Mountain Fa La La La La, or Ninkasi Sleigh’r Dark Döuble Alt Ale 13 b. If you desire a strong, complex ale with a creamy, toffee flavored body with the essence of caramel and hops. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Pike Old Bawdy Barley Wine Style Ale

Elements: The Scientific Magazine

I Spy: Elements Edition

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I spy a sponge, five arms, a chondrichthyes’ jaws, a turtle, two beaks, and an animal with paws; Two hummer eggs, two forms of chalk, seven out-of-place shells, and one quartzose rock;

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Robert Niese

of the University of Puget Sound

An NMR tube, a cryptic crab, a trilobite, 12 raindrops, Amanita, and a bryophyte; A sep funnel, two boletes, a vial for GC, a ruler, yellow sperm, and a slug of the sea.

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Elements: The Scientific Magazine

James Gaines

10 tips

for stuffing your next European Beaver

!

Help I Can’t Find My Gonads

Cetacean Sensation!

What to do when you get a beached whale

Deflated Breasts?

...could be anorexia

Cloacal Protuberances Are they worth it?

QUIZ

How well do you know the internal viscera of your

bushtits?

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new mounting positions to try this winter